Slender: The Arrival review – paranormal activity

Cult hit Slender gets a paid-for sequel that features some of the most terrifying scenes in gaming – but does it also include value for money?

Slender: The Arrival (PC) – do you see him?

Maybe it’s the lingering winter weather, or perhaps it’s the lingering disappointment of Resident Evil 6, but there’s been a lot of talk lately about the future of survival horror. And yet while the genre is all but dead in terms of mainstream gaming indie developers are as invested as ever, especially on the PC with games like Amnesia: The Dark Descent and… Slender.

Released last June Slender, now retroactively given the subtitle The Eight Pages, was a minor Internet sensation. Released for free you can still download it for nothing from the original website and despite lasting only a few minutes at a time it stands as a classic of its kind.

The game was primarily inspired by the Slender Man character from the Something Awful forum, but also ‘Creepy Watson’ from Frogwares’ Sherlock Holmes games. More indie than most, the game quickly gained a legion of mods and unofficial follow-ups, but this is the only official one from original developer Parsec Productions. It’s also the first time you’ve been expected to pay for the experience, via the official website.

Slender is primarily a mood piece, which is not necessarily a criticism and certainly a description that could be applied to any other true survival horror. The original game had you running through the woods from the mysterious Slender Men. Your goal was to find eight pieces of paper scrawled with obscure messages, while managing a stamina bar and trying to stave off insanity – indicated by an increasing amount of static in your first person view of the world.

In gameplay terms that’s all there was to the game, but given its short duration it was impossible for it to outstay its welcome. In fact half the time we spent playing it we were secretly wishing it would end sooner, so thick was its atmosphere of inescapable doom.

The Arrival is no less disturbing an experience, and Parsec Productions have been wise enough to leave the Slender Man himself as an unknowable, implacable menace that cannot be fought in any traditional manner. There’s no final boss battle showdown here, just a mad dash through uninhabited houses, abandoned mines, and a greater range of exterior locations than the original.

The first person visuals are excellent, especially for such a low budget title, and the ambient sounds and music add at least as much to the atmosphere. Even at this early stage The Arrival must surely be in the running for the best audio of the year, and although having creepy children whisper in the background seems clichéd that doesn’t lessen the effectiveness one bit.

But atmosphere was never likely to be a problem with The Arrival. What is a problem is that rather than inventing any new tricks this sequel simply drags out the same gameplay loop over a longer period of time. Although there are more than just pieces of paper to search for now you’re still not doing much more than playing a hidden object game as you go searching for generators, windows to shut, or hidden keys.

Worse still the range of enemies has been increased but now they’re all capable of killing you instantly and without warning. Turning around to find a creepy knife-wielding kid right on top of you is terrifying, but it’s also irritating when you realise it’s lost you the game through no fault of your own.

The almost inevitable problem for The Arrival is that as soon as you have to start worrying about providing value for money the artistic priorities of the original are compromised. At a maximum The Arrival will provide an hour’s worth of playtime, but considering the original could be completed in just a few minutes that means the whole concept has been stretched out to an uncomfortable length.

There certainly does seem like there should’ve been a way to expand Slender into a full length game, but it had to involve adding to the original experience, not just extending its duration. The Arrival still manages its principal goal of scaring the wits out of you with consummate ease, but it’s almost equally adept at frustration and, once the cycle of repetition sets in, boredom.

In Short: The scares are still there but in gameplay terms the experience is far too… slender to justify the repetition and frustration of this sequel.

Pros: Impressively thick atmosphere with excellent graphics and pitch perfect sound design. The original Slender concept is still as scary as ever.

Cons: The first game had little real gameplay and this sequel does nothing to expand things, just repeat the experience often enough to rob it of its power.